The Light of Scarthey: A Romance

by Egerton Castle

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  LAUNCHED ON THE GREAT WAVE

  Sir Adrian made, at first personally, then through Miss O'Donoghue,two attempts to induce his wife to return to Pulwick, or at any rateto leave Lancaster on the next day. But the contempt, then the fury,which she opposed to their reasoning rendered it worse than useless.

  The very sight of her husband, indeed, seemed to exasperate theunfortunate woman to such a degree that, in spite of his anxietyconcerning her, he resolved to spare her even to the consciousness ofhis presence, and absented himself altogether from the house.

  Miss O'Donoghue, unable to cope with a state of affairs at once sodistressing and so unbecoming, finally retired to her own apartmentwith a book of piety and some gruel, and abandoned all furtherendeavour to guide her unruly relations. So that Molly found herselfleft to her own resources, in the guardianship of Rene, the onlycompany her misery could tolerate.

  Three times she went to the castle, to be met each time with theannouncement that, by the express wish of the prisoner, no visitorswere to be admitted to him again. Then in restless wandering about thestreets--once entering the little chapel where the silent tabernacleseemed, with its closed door, to offer no relenting to the stormy cryof her soul, and sent her forth uncomforted in the very midst ofRene's humble bead-telling, to pace the flags anew--so the terribleday wore to a close for her; and so that night came, precursor of themost terrible day of all.

  The exhaustion of Lady Landale's body produced at last a fortunatetorpor of mind. Flung upon her bed she fell into a heavy sleep, andTanty who announced her intention of watching her, when Rene'sguardianship had of necessity to cease, had the satisfaction ofinforming Adrian, as he crept into the house, like one who had nobusiness there, of this consoling fact before retiring herself to thecapacious arm-chair in which she heroically purposed to spend thenight.

  The sun was bright in the heavens, there was a clatter and bustle inthe street, when Molly woke with a great start out of this sleep ofexhaustion. Her heart beating with heavy strokes, she sat up in bedand gazed upon her surroundings with startled eyes. What was thisstrange feeling of oppression, of terror? Why was she in this sordidlittle room? Why was her hair cut short? Ah, my God! memory returnedupon her all too swiftly. It was for to-day--_to-day_; and she wasperhaps too late. She might never see him again!

  The throbbing of her heart was suffocating, sickening, as she slippedout of bed. For a moment she hardly dared consult the little watchthat lay ticking upon her dressing table. It was only a few minutespast seven; there was yet time.

  The energy of her desire conquered the weakness of her overwroughtnerves.

  Noiselessly, so as to avoid awakening the slumbering watcher in thearm-chair, but steadily, she clothed herself, wrapt the dark mantleround her; and then, pausing for a moment to gaze with a fiercedisdain at the unconscious face of Miss O'Donoghue, which, with snoresemerging energetically and regularly from the great hooked nose,presented a weird and witchlike vision in the frame of a nightcap,fearfully and wonderfully befrilled, crept from the room and down thestairs.

  At Rene's door she paused and knocked.

  He opened on the instant. From his worn face she guessed that he hadbeen up all night. He put his finger to his lips as he saw her, andglanced meaningly towards the bed.

  The words she would have spoken expired in a quick-drawn breath. Herhusband, with face of deathlike pallor and silvered hair abroad uponthe pillow, lay upon the poor couch, still in his yesterday attire,but covered carefully with a cloak. His breast rose and fellpeacefully with his regular breath.

  The scorn with which she had looked at Miss O'Donoghue now shot fortha thousand times intensified from Molly's circled eyes upon theprostrate figure.

  "Asleep!" she cried.

  And then with that incongruity with which things trivial andirrelevant come upon us, even in the supremest moments of life, thethought struck her sharply how old a man he was. Her lip curved.

  "Yes, My Lady--asleep," answered Rene steadily--it seemed as if thefaithful peasant had read her to her soul. "Thank God, asleep. It isenough to have to lose one good gentleman from the world this day. Ifhis honour were not sleeping at last, I should not answer for him--Iwho speak to you. I took upon myself to put some of the medicine, thathe has had to take now and again, when his sorrows come upon him andhe cannot rest, into his soup last night. It has had a good effect.His honour will sleep three or four hours still, and that, My Lady,must be. His honour has suffered enough these last days, God knows!"

  The wife turned away with an impatient gesture.

  "Look, Madame, at his white hairs. All white now--they that were of abrown so beautiful, all but a few locks, only a few months past! Wellmay he look old. When was ever any one made to suffer as he has been,in only forty years of life? Ah, My Lady, we were at least tranquilupon our island!"

  There was a volume of reproach in the quiet simplicity of the words,though Lady Landale was too bent on her own purpose to heed them. Butshe felt that they lodged in her mind, that she would find them therelater; but not now--not now.

  "It is to be for nine o'clock, you know," she said, with desperatecalmness. "I must see him again. I must see him well. Alone I shallnot be able to get a good place in the crowd. Oh, I would see all!"she added, with a terrible laugh.

  Rene cast a glance at his master's placid face.

  "I am ready to come with My Lady," he said then, and took his hat.

  A turbulent, tender April day it was. Gusts of west wind, balmy andsweet with all the sweet budding life of the fields beyond, cameeddying up the dusty streets and blowing merrily into the faces of theholiday crowd that already pressed in a steady stream towards thecastle courtyard to see the hanging. In those days there were hangingsso many after assizes that an execution could hardly be said topossess the interest of novelty. But there were circumstances enoughattending the forthcoming show to give it quite a piquancy of its ownin the eyes of the worthy Lancastrian burghers, who hurried with wivesand children to the place of doom, anxious to secure sitting orstanding room with a good view of the gallows-tree.

  It was not every day, indeed, that a _gentleman_ was hanged. Sohandsome a man, too, as the rumours went, and so dare-devil a fellow;friend of the noble family of Landale, and a murderer of its mostrespected member. Could justice ever have served up a spicier dishwhereon to regale the multitude?

  First the courtyard, then, the walls, the roofs of the adjoininghouses, swarmed with an eager crowd. Every space of ground and slateand tile, every ledge and window, was occupied. As thick as bees theyhung--men, women, and children; a sea of white faces pressed together,each still, yet all as instinct with tremulous movement as a field ofcorn in the wind; while the hoarse, indescribable murmur that seizesone with so strange and fearsome an impression, the voice of themultitude, rose and fell with a mighty pulsation, broken here andthere by the shriller cry of a child.

  Overhead the sky, a delicious spring blue sky, flecked with tiny whiteclouds, looked down like a great smile upon the crowd that laughed andjoked beneath.

  No pity in heaven or on earth.

  But as the felon came out into the air, which, warm and fickle, puffedagainst his cheek, he cast one steady glance around upon the blackhuman hive and then looked up into the white flecked ether, withoutthe quiver of a nerve.

  He drew the spring breath into his lungs with a grateful expansion ofhis deep chest. How fresh it was! And the sky, how fair and blue!

  As the eagerly expected group emerged from the prison door and wasgreeted by a roar that curdled the blood in at least one woman's heartthere, an old Irish hag, who sat in a coign of vantage, hugging herknees and crooning, a little black pipe held in her toothless jaws,ceased her dismal hum to concentrate all her attention upon thecondemned man.

  The creature was well known for miles around as a constant attendantat such spectacles, and had become in the course of time a privilegedspectator. No one would have dreamt of disputing the first place toold Judy. S
ince the day when, still a young woman, she had seen hertwo sons, mere lads, hanged, the one for sheep-stealing, the other forharbouring the booty, she had, by a strange freak of nature, taken ataste for the spectacle of justice at work, and what had been thecause of her greatest sorrow became the only solace of her life. Judyand her pipe had become as familiar a figure at the periodicalentertainment as the executioner himself--more so, indeed, for she hadseen many generations of these latter, and could compare their styleswith the judgment of a connoisseur.

  But as Captain Jack advanced, the pallor of his clean shorn, handsomeface illumined not so much by the morning sun without it seemed as bythe shining of the bright spirit within; as gallantly clad as he hadever been, even in the old Bath days when he had been courting fairMadeleine de Savenaye; his head proudly uplifted, his tread firm,strong of soul, strong of body--some chord was struck in the pervertedold heart that had so long revelled in unholy and gruesome pleasure.She drew the pipe from her lips, and broke out into screechinglamentations.

  "Oh, me boy, me boy, me beautiful boy! Is it hang him they will, andhe so beautiful and brave? The murthering villains, my curse onthem--a mother's curse--God's curse on them--the black murtherers!"

  She scrambled to her feet, and shook her fist wildly in the face ofone of the sheriff's men.

  A woman in the crowd, standing rigid and motionless, enveloped inmourning robes, here suddenly caught up the words with a mutteringlip.

  "Murderers, who said murderers? Don't they know who murdered him?Murdering Moll, Murdering Moll!"

  "For heaven's love, Madam," cried a man beside her, who seemed in suchanxiety concerning her as to pay little heed to the solemn processionwhich was now attracting universal attention, "let me take you away!"

  But she looked at him with a distraught, unseeing eye, and pulled atthe collar of her dress as if she were choking.

  Old Judy's sudden expression of opinion created a small disturbance.The procession had to halt; a couple of officials good-naturedlyelbowed her on one side.

  But she thrust a withered hand expanded in protest over theirshoulders, as the prisoner came forward again.

  "God bless ye, honey, God bless ye: it's a wicked world."

  He turned towards her; for the last time the old sweet smile sprang tolip and eye.

  "Thank you, mother," he said, and raised his hand to his bare headwith courteous gesture.

  The crowd howled and swayed. He passed on.

  And now the end! There is the cart; the officers draw back to make wayfor the man who is to help him with his final toilet. The chaplain,too, falls away after wringing his hand again and again. Good man, heweeps and cannot speak the sacred words he would. Why weep? We mustall die! How blue the sky is: he will look once more before drawingdown the cap upon his eyes. His hands are free, for he is to die aslike a gentleman as may be. Just the old blue that used to smile downat him upon his merry _Peregrine_, and up at him from the dancingwaves. He had always thought he would have liked to die upon the sea,in the cool fresh water ... a clean, brave death.

  It is hard to die in a crowd. Even the very beasts would creep intocave or bush to die decently--unwatched.

  A last puff of sweeping wind in his face; then darkness, blind,suffocating....

  Ah, God is good! Here is the old ship giving and rising under his feetlike the living creature he always thought her, and here is dazzlingbrilliant sunshine all around, so bright he scarce can see the freewhite-crested waves that are dashing down upon him; but he is upon thesea indeed, upon the sea alone, and the waves are coming. Hark howthey roar, see how they gather! The brave _Peregrine_ she dips andsprings, she will weather the breakers with him at the helm no matterhow they rear. On, on they come, mountain high, overwhelming, bitterdrenching.

  A great wave in very truth, it gathers and breaks and onward rolls,and carries the soul of Hubert Cochrane with it.

  The woman in the black cloak falls as if she had been struck, and asthose around her draw apart to let her companion and another man lifther and carry her away, they note with horror that her face is darkand swollen, as if the cord that had just done its evil work yonderhad been tightened also round her slender throat.